


On My Lips Her Kiss

by alexcat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amsterdam, Angst, Disguise, F/M, Romance, wrong assumptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 22:15:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: Steve falls in love with her when he meets her, but she is someone else's, isn't she?





	On My Lips Her Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Larry for betaing this one for me.
> 
> ~~~~~  
_ Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss_  
_Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed_  
_Together in my dream, through some dim glade,_  
_Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss._  
~~ Emma Lazarus

Steve knew he fell in love quickly. Too quickly sometimes. 

He was surprised at how quickly he fell for her though. 

Natasha Romanov. The Black Widow. 

He met her when he and Bruce were brought aboard the hellicarrier to fight Loki, their first Avengers mission. -. 

He’d read her dossier, or at least as much of it as he was allowed to read. She was a former Russian spy brought in by Clint Barton and turned. She had mad skills and had been an assassin as well as a spy since she was a mere child. There were no more details. 

Her red hair shone in the sun on the deck of the carrier that day. She had on tight jeans with her weapon and holster on the left side. Her breasts strained the fabric of the shirt she wore. He wanted to kiss her right then and there. She was all business and efficiency, but that only made her more attractive to Steve. He liked strong women, always had.

He’d been disappointed when he walked into her quarters on the hellicarrier and saw Barton with her after she’d reclaimed him from Loki’s mind control. They seemed so familiar with one another that he assumed they were lovers. It wasn’t until the battle was done that he had a chance to think about it more. Perhaps their relationship was the reason Barton refused to kill her. Maybe he’d fallen in love with her at first sight, too, just like Steve had. 

They’d all moved into new quarters at Stark Towers after the battle of New York, renaming it Avengers Tower. 

Steve hadn’t lived in the same house with a woman since Ma had died when he was eighteen. It was quite a shock seeing Natasha in a sports bra and those tiny little shorts with a ratty bathrobe over them on the first morning they were all there together. She had come into the communal kitchen about the same time he got there. The others hadn’t gotten up yet. 

“Got your eyes full, Rogers?” she asked with a wicked grin. 

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m not used to living with girls.” He blushed. 

“Ma’am? Do I look like your grandmother? And Rogers, I’m a woman, not a girl.” 

He’d blushed again. “Yes, ma- yes, Romanov.” 

She nodded and went back to looking in the fridge, still grinning to herself. 

“Not got the hang of the twenty-first century yet?” she asked as she leaned down and retrieved a container of cream cheese. 

“Not quite yet,” he answered. He couldn’t help but notice the curve of her ass as she bent over. “Everything is so fast now.”

“Like bagels?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder.

“Sure.”

“Then pop us a couple into the toaster. I’ll make some coffee.” 

She handed him the package of bagels. He looked around and finally saw the toaster. It had settings on it for different times and he had no idea how long it took to make a bagel. He’d never done much cooking. 

“See the little picture of a bagel there?” she asked as she measured coffee into the basket. 

There it was right on the settings. He touched the setting then lowered the bagels into the toaster. 

“Good boy,” she said with that infuriating grin he’d already grown to like.

Clint came waltzing in about the time the toaster popped. He wore flannel pants and a black t-shirt and he was still barefooted. His hair was rumpled and messy.

“Morning, Nat,” he said as he popped Natasha on the bottom on his way to the coffee pot. 

“Hungry?” she asked him with her mouth half full of a piece of the banana she was slicing. 

“Yep.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. He looked at Steve. “So what are you and the little woman talking about?” 

That earned Barton a pop on the head with a spatula.

“Uh, bagels. She showed me how to toast bagels.” 

Clint raised an eyebrow at Steve. “Cap, she can’t toast a bagel without burning it herself. Never take cooking advice from her. This girl can burn water.”

She looked over at Steve and shrugged, mouthing the word ‘woman’. Clint caught the reference and laughed at her. 

He was sure now that she and Barton were together. 

Barton ate his bagel and looked over into her bowl of fruit, picking out a few strawberries and popping them in his mouth. She made a face at him. 

“Wanna spar after we eat?” Barton asked Natasha as he robbed her bowl of a few more strawberries. She smacked his hand away. 

“Not right after. I might throw up on you.” 

Barton laughed. “Been there, done that. No thanks. About 10:30 then?” 

“Yeah. I need to do some laundry first.”

“Will you throw mine in with yours?” 

“Eww. Your socks will contaminate everything. Just drop your basket by and I’ll do them, but you owe me big time.”

Barton looked over at Steve and shrugged. “I always owe her. It’s why she doesn’t kill me.”

“He’s right,” Natasha said as she took her coffee and left.

Barton got up shortly after she left. “I need to rig some arrows to shoot crooked. She always wants archery lessons and I can’t let her outshoot me. I’d never hear the end of it. Later, Cap.”

After Barton left the kitchen, Steve put all the cups and bowls into the dishwasher and headed to his own room. He wanted to see if he could find out any more about Natasha. Maybe Maria Hill could tell him something. The question was, would she? Hill and SHIELD played things close to the vest. 

*

“Steve, all I know is that she was a Russian operative and Barton was sent to neutralize her. Next thing we know, he shows up with her in tow. I thought Fury and Coulson would explode and refuse, but they seemed to take it in stride,” Maria told him over the phone. “They embraced her like she was a long lost daughter.”

“Do you know anything about her before?” 

“I – uh – no.’

“You can’t tell me?” Of course, she couldn’t.

“I can’t tell you that I can’t tell you.” 

“Thanks anyway.”

“As far as I know, you can trust her, if that’s why you’re asking.”

“Uh, not really why.”

“Ohhh, I understand.” He heard the smile in her voice.

“What do you understand?” Steve asked. 

“Captain Rogers, I have seen her, too. She’s quite attractive.”

Steve smiled as he thought of her. “Yes, she is that.” 

*

After a couple of months at Avengers Tower, Fury asked Steve to come to DC to live, mostly to satisfy the World Security Council. He didn’t really mind. Natasha was in DC a lot of the time anyway. He still got to spend time with her and actually got to know her better away from all the others, especially Barton. 

She got a new mission in life and began trying to find dates for him. 

And he had to find reasons not to ask them out. This was harder than he’d thought. Some of them were girls he’d have liked a lot if he hadn’t been so crazy about Natasha.

“So, who are dating now?” she asked him one afternoon after they finished a small job. 

“Same person I’ve been dating since the first time you asked?” 

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Your own right hand, huh?” 

He turned several shades of red. 

“I take that as a yes, so do I need to double down? How about Hill? Wanna go out with Maria Hill?” 

“I’m good. I too busy for dating.”

“Afraid of her, huh?” She made a face that said she didn’t believe a word of it. 

The real truth was he didn’t have much work in DC. He suspected that he really was in DC so Fury could keep tabs on him as well as the WSC. He was mostly doing busy work and handling minor things that the police could handle. Petty crime was a walk in the park for him, but it was also quite boring. 

In a search for something to do, he found he loved to run out on the National Mall early in the morning, and there was a guy who was almost always there when he was. He’d taken to teasing him when he passed him by calling ‘on your left’ as he ran by him again and again. No one could really outrun a supersolodier, could they? 

One morning the guy introduced himself as Sam Wilson, said he was a vet who worked down at the VA. Steve liked him immediately, especially the fact that Sam knew who he was, but didn’t seem too intimidated by it. Most people were. Some were even scared of him. 

They chatted a few moments and Sam invited him down to the VA sometime, said he’d love to impress the girl at the front desk. Steve thought he might go. Maybe he needed to make some friends outside SHIELD and the Avengers. 

As they were talking, Natasha had buzzed him on his phone and drove up a fraction of a second later. 

Good god! She looked like a freaking goddess in that tight black ‘catsuit’. Barton better know how damned lucky he was. If she were his, he’d tell her a million times a day. 

“Where we going?” he asked as he waved at Sam and they drove off. 

“Rescue mission. The _Lemurian Star_ out in the Indian Ocean. Georges Batroc has taken a bunch of hostages and we gotta get them back. The ship is a SHIELD vessel.”

He nodded as they met up with Rumlow and the STRIKE team at the staging area. He got suited up as did the others. Natasha teased him about dates again as they flew to their destination. 

He finally told her he didn’t have time to ask any of the prospective dates out, hoping it would satisfy her. She never let up, he thought with a smile. 

He was furious when he found out she was downloading data on the ship instead of helping secure the hostages on the _Lemurian Star_ for two reasons, one being that Fury had sent her on a secret mission and not told him, the mission leader, and the other was he’d been terrified she was hurt when she didn’t join them in the fight. 

He’d gone straight to Fury when they’d gotten back, mad as hell over sending Natasha on a side mission and not informing him what the hell was going on. When Fury told him about Project Insight, he wished he hadn’t asked. Project Insight smelled of everything that he despised. A free society could never be completely safe and a safe society could never be free. It was that simple. 

Project Insight sounded like some horrible futuristic film where people were punished for bad thoughts before they could do bad deeds. On the surface, it sounded sensible, but it was a first step in controlling the thoughts and actions of a free society. The whole idea sickened him. He’d already fought in a war to protect individual freedom. He didn’t want to fight another one, but he would if need be. 

Everything unraveled quickly after that as Fury tried to find out what was happening at SHIELD. 

Next thing anyone knew, Fury was shot and killed by what they assumed were the enemy, but not before he had let himself in at Steve’s apartment and given him the USB drive that Natasha had downloaded on the _Lemurian Star_. Fury had told him to trust no one. It seemed that Fury had smelled a rat in SHIELD as well.

Natasha showed up at the hospital and they talked, both realizing, as Fury had, that something was bad wrong within SHIELD. Fury died on the operating table and Hill whisked his body away. 

Director Pierce sent Rumlow to the hospital to bring Steve to the Triskelion for a chat. Pierce tried to convince Steve that Fury had gone off the rails and was a traitor. Steve declined to join him when he claimed that Fury had gone rogue. Rumlow and the STRIKE team tried to kill Steve in the elevator and he’d jumped out the window after beating them all up. 

Things went from bad to worse and he and Natasha decided they needed to know what was on the thumb drive so they went to a tech store at the local mall and Rumlow and the STRIKE team goons came after them.

The kiss… oh god, the kiss. She got him to kiss her to throw Rumlow off their track, claiming that public displays of affection made people so nervous and uncomfortable that they would look away. It worked, too well. He hadn’t wanted to let her go. Her body fit against his so perfectly and her lips were so soft. He knew she felt his body respond to being so close to her. Mercifully, she didn’t tease him about it. 

They couldn’t decrypt the files on the drive, but they did point to a signal in New Jersey. Camp Lehigh, to be exact. The same place he’d trained all those years ago after he was chosen for the supersoldier program. Something bad was going on. 

She’d asked him about the kiss on the way to Camp Lehigh, asked him if it was his first kiss since 1945. He’d lied when he said it wasn’t. It had been. Who was he supposed to kiss? Nick Fury? 

HYDRA was alive and running SHIELD, it turned out and after a strike was called in to destroy the evidence, he protected the two of them from the explosion by using his shield and then he and Natasha ran, all the way to Sam Wilson’s house. They were exhausted and he let them crash in his room while he kept guard from the sofa. 

Steve was right when he’d thought Sam was a good guy. He didn’t even question them, just let them in. 

As bad as things were, Steve was totally distracted from all of it when Natasha was in the shower and he sat a few feet away on the bed. His mind and other parts of his body could imagine her soapy hands touching… 

She came out of the bathroom in her underwear as if it were a normal thing. He blushed furiously as she motioned for him to get cleaned up, too.

“We both smell like explosives and sweat.” 

After they were both clean and had made a few tentative plans, Natasha told him they needed to get some sleep. 

“You go first,” he told her. 

“Come on, Rogers. Sam’s got this so we both can a little rest while we can.” 

He felt awkward, but he lay in the bed with her. He felt even more awkward when she scooted over and curled up against him with her arm over his chest. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked, raising her head and looking at him. 

“This is a bit strange for me.” 

“I promise I won’t take advantage,” she said with that wicked grin she gave him so often. 

He couldn’t tell her that was what he wanted more than anything in the world right now. 

Then she said slowly, “Unless you want me to.” 

He realized she was serious, but he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with casual sex with her. He didn’t think it could be casual for him and she already had someone else. He wasn’t low enough to sleep with someone else’s girlfriend. 

“I’m all right, N’tasha. I’m pretty tired.”

She nodded and put her head back on his chest. Despite being sure he’d never sleep at all, Steve and Natasha both were asleep in minutes. It had been a really long day and they were both mentally and physically exhausted.

*

As it turned out, there would be a lot of very long days to follow. Their whole world fell down around their heads. Through Armin Zola, HYDRA had been inside SHIELD all the time and Steve’s friend, Bucky, had not died in the war, after all, but had been saved by the enemy and turned into a killing machine without memories or conscience. He was the man who’d shot Fury and he’d been sent by Pierce to do the job. 

Natasha burned herself when she made all of SHIELD’s secrets public in overthrowing Alexander Pierce and taking down the house of cards HYDRA had built. Her secrets were also exposed, hers and everyone else’s. 

After battling with Bucky to take down the Project Insight helicarriers, Steve had been fished from the Potomac. Natasha sat with him when Sam wasn’t there. He’d been shot several times and hurt quite badly, but his super soldier serum made him heal much faster than any non-enhanced man would have. By the third day, the doctor said he could go home. He was going to an undisclosed location, which was actually Sam’s house.

“I’m going with you,” she told him as he dressed in the bathroom with the door partially opened so he could hear her.

“I’ll be fine.”

“I know that, but I’m going to stay with you anyway.” 

“As soon as I’m well, I want to find Bucky.” He came out of the bathroom. He was still moving a little slowly, but he was dressed and ready to leave. “And figure out what to do now that SHIELD is gone.”

“I might can help with the first one. I still have some contacts in Russia They found him and made him into the Winter Soldier.” She didn’t say more though, he thought she knew a lot more.

Sam insisted that Steve sleep in the bed and he took the sofa. He also insisted that Natasha take the bed as well. Steve didn’t know how he could handle sleeping every night with someone else’s girlfriend, one he was crazy about, and not be able to touch her. 

As it had turned out, Fury wasn’t dead at all and he went underground while Maria Hill had gone to work for Tony Stark. Steve wasn’t sure what they were doing now. SHIELD was gone and he was persona non grata, as far as the government was concerned. 

The first night was not a problem. He’d been so tired from the hospital and coming home that he slept like a baby. The second was harder. She had come to bed in only a tank top and her panties. 

“Why are you staying with me?” he asked after they turned out the lights. 

“I like you. You need some tending. After I’m satisfied you’re all right, I’m going to see if I can figure out who I am. All my covers are blown and I’m exposed. I’m pretty sure there are people I used to work with who’d like to find me. I need to find some new covers and protect myself.” 

“How did you end up with Barton?” 

She looked at him oddly for a moment and answered him. “He decided not to take me out and offered me a job instead. I took it.”

“What did Fury say?” 

“I don’t think he was pleased. He gave me a lot of shitty jobs to test me. He finally decided that I was the real thing and here I am.” She laughed, that throaty laugh that he loved to hear. 

“Hill said he welcomed you with open arms.”

Natasha laughed. “Seriously?”

“Yes.” 

“You asked Hill about me? Why?” 

“I was curious, and I like to know about the people I’m working with.” 

“Not sure I like that, but I do understand it.” 

“Are you enhanced? I’ve seen you fight.” The question had occurred to him when he saw her fighting in New York. And again when they’d fought the Winter Soldier a few days ago. 

“I don’t know. The medics say no, but I’m not sure. I know very little about my childhood.” She bit her lip nervously. He’d never seen her look nervous at all. 

“What do you mean?” he pressed.

She paused and took a deep breath. “You know about the Red Room?” 

“Not a lot.” He’d heard of it. It was some kind of Russian training facility. 

“The Red Room was a Soviet KGB program to make an army of spies out of little girls. We were small, not much older than toddlers when we were taken from our families and raised by the handlers in the Red Room. It was thrive or die there. We went to work at young ages, six, seven or so.”

“As what?”

She got very quiet for a moment. “Spies, assassins. We were trained to kill. Who would fear a pretty little girl?”

Her file notation about being a child spy made sense now. He wanted to hold her, to sooth her but he wasn’t sure what she’d say or do. Natasha seemed determined no one ever feel sorry for her. 

“They took our memories and replaced them with manufactured ones. I don’t know who I am,” she said as she curled up against his side. “I don’t even know if my memories are real ones or the ones they made up for me. They equipped us to be perfect operatives with no real connections to distract us from the mission. They even had us sterilized to that end.” The casual way she said the last sentence was deceptive. 

He put his arm around her and drew her close, kissing her hair. She turned her face up to his and looked into his eyes. “I know what I am,” she told him. “I’m a killer. I have a lot to make up for. Clint gave me a chance to do that when he brought me in.”

He kissed her lips before he thought, wanting to comfort her, needing to sooth her. She opened her mouth to the kiss and he slipped his tongue inside, tasting her as he pressed her back onto the bed. Her arms went around his neck and she arched her body against his. He knew he had to stop before they began to remove their clothes or he’d never be able to stop. 

She was someone else’s lover! She belonged to Barton!

His protest died in his throat as she tugged his undershirt up and ran her hands over his bare stomach and chest. Then she tugged her own shirt up. 

“We shouldn’t do this,” he whispered as she pulled his head to her chest. She offered him a peaked nipple and he sucked it into his mouth. He stopped thinking soon after as Natasha lifted her hips and removed her panties. She reached for his shirt then nodded toward his pants. He slipped them down and off, throwing them in the floor, all pretense of protesting gone. 

“You look as good as I thought you would,” she purred as she explored him with her hands and mouth, licking and kissing her way down his body. He moaned and bucked his hips up beneath her when she ran her tongue up and down the length of his cock. He tangled his hands in her hair and pulled her back up to kiss her. He could barely remember his own name by the time she pushed him back on to the bed and moved over him. 

“N’tasha!” he cried out as she lowered herself onto him. 

She put a finger over his mouth. “Shhh. You’ll wake Sam.” 

There was no need for any more foreplay. He was ready and had been since she touched his bare skin.

She leaned down and kissed him as they began to move together. Making love with her was everything he’d thought it would be. She didn’t hold back, nor did he. She rode him like both their lives depended on it and they came together, clinging to one another for a long time after, until both of them could breathe again. 

If he’d loved her before, he loved her even more now. He was in way over his head and he knew it.

*

In the next few weeks, they each realized that their lives were to be forever changed by the fall of SHIELD. Fury met them at his ‘grave’ – everyone went their separate ways. Natasha said she had to rebuild her brand and Sam decided to throw in with Steve and help him in his search for Bucky. Fury headed to Europe to poke some rats from the HYDRA ship. 

After their evening in Sam’s bed, Natasha acted as if it never happened. She was still trying to find him a date. 

“Call that nurse,” she told him with a smile, just before she left him. 

“She’s not a nurse.”

Natasha smiled. “And you’re not a SHIELD agent. Her name is Sharon.” 

She gave him the folder she’d gotten from her contact about the Winter Soldier and then she was gone. He and Sam began to search for Bucky.

*

Several months later, Fury called Steve. 

“Now that SHIELD is gone, more than ever, we need the Avengers. Stark has agreed to bankroll the thing if you’ll be the leader. He’s also offered Stark Tower to house you all.”

“Who is in?” 

“Romanov. Barton. Thor has agreed to help out. So has Banner.”

Natasha had gone dark to work out her own issues a few weeks after she’d given Steve the dossier. He figured she went back to Barton, though they’d never talked about Barton at all. He’d felt guilty at what they had done, but she, oddly enough to him, hadn’t seemed upset at all.

The Avengers began to take on some of the missions that Fury found when he poked HYDRA. Their main mission became to get to Baron von Strucker and to get Loki’s Scepter back. It had been smuggled out of SHIELD after it fell and sent to him in Sokovia. They all feared what he would do with it. 

During the mission to recover the Scepter, Steve noticed that Natasha spent more time with Banner than she did Barton. She _did_ seem to be the only one who could calm him down when he was in smash mode. He found it odd, but let it go. 

Tony threw a party when they got home, a party none of them would ever forget.

It all started well enough. 

Steve managed to get drunk on Asgardian mead with Thor at the party. Bruce was sort of chatting Natasha up as she played bartender, but Steve didn’t pay too much attention. He did egg Bruce on a bit. He must have been a little drunker than he realized. 

Ultron sobered them all up and fast. He was much worse than Loki and the Chitauri had been. He was born from the mind of Tony Stark, with all the brilliance of Stark and none of the morality. Steve had been around Stark enough to know that he had a profound wish to undo all he had done to make the world less safe and that he was terrified of what was beyond Earth, just waiting to attack them. This very morality had made a monster worse than anyone’s nightmares. It had made Ultron, whose only goal was peace at any cost. Period. 

Ultron believed that the Avengers and all humans threatened the idea of peace and he meant to rectify that by ridding the world of them and setting up his own world. 

The Avengers all ended up hiding out at Barton’s house after a failed first foray against Ultron and the Maximoff twins in Sokovia. Things had not gone well for them. 

He was in for a huge shock when they got to the safehouse! Barton had a wife and children! Why had Natasha let him think she was Barton’s lover all along? Had she been that desperate to keep him away? Was she Barton’s lover anyway? 

Now she was all spoony with Banner. What the hell had he done when he’d shoved her toward Banner? He felt jealousy burn as she went to the spare bedroom with Bruce at bedtime. 

Events sort of took care of him worrying about his crush on Natasha for a while. They very nearly failed in their attempt to stop Ultron. The world only saw the mess they made without having any real idea how close they all came to annihilation. The Hulk ended up gone in a Quinjet after the battle, simply gone. The rest of them had to take the fallout. 

Steve felt awful that Bruce was gone, but there was a tiny part of him was glad. 

After the battle, they all moved to the new Avengers Headquarters that Stark gave them. This was their new home in upstate New York. He and Natasha were tasked with training a new breed of Avengers.

He was unpacking the few belongings he had in his new quarters when someone knocked on his door. 

“It’s me,” Natasha called out. 

He opened the door and smiled. They had remained friends through all the things that had happened, despite his jealousy. “Hey, come on in,” he motioned her inside. 

“You ready for this?” She pulled a flask from her pocket and held it up to ask if he wanted any. He shook his head and she took the lid off and tipped it up, taking a pull from it. 

“I suppose so. Wanda is maybe the only wild card, though God only knows what Vision will do.”

She shook her head. “They’re both so powerful. Sam and Rhodes? They won’t be a problem. Soldiers and good ones.”

“I’m glad Sam decided to join us. I like him a lot. He’s a good friend. ”

Natasha smiled. “I like him, too. Oh, I heard from Clint. Laura had the baby. Both are okay.”

He started to ask her why she’d let him think they were lovers, but decided it made him seem pathetic and desperate. Well, he was those things, but she didn’t need to know that, did she? 

“Think he’ll join us? “

“I think he just wants to be with his family for a while.”

He nodded. He understood that. Barton was the only one of them with any actual family to stay with. He’d had no family since his Ma died. 

“Steve, has Fury said anything about Bruce?” she asked him.

“You know what I know. Nothing as far as I know.”

“You know how Fury is. He’s not above keeping things from any of us if he thinks he can use them sometime to his own advantage,” she said. “I don’t always trust that he’s telling me the whole truth.”

He’d have argued with her, but he knew she was telling the truth. Fury would do whatever it took to get the job done. Whatever it took. Faking his own death had proved that to all of them. “I don’t think Fury ever tells anyone the whole truth,” he finally said.

“Do any of us?” she asked with an eyebrow raised. 

He shrugged, wondering how much she knew about his feelings for her. 

“So how do you want to do this?” she asked him. 

“Well, physical training can’t hurt. Who knows about Vision? But the rest would benefit from training. Maybe some hand to hand for Wanda, though she’s so young, I don’t know how I feel about putting her in harm’s way.” 

Natasha nodded. 

“We have a lot of tactical training to do. Again Sam and Rhodes are fine. They’re military and understand, but Wanda? She’s a wild card, isn’t she?” he said to her as he put his underwear in the top drawer of his dresser. 

“I guess time will tell,” was all the answer Natasha had. 

They fell into a routine rather quickly at the new headquarters, and the training went well. They began to go on missions. They did okay, but they all tended to protect Wanda. She was young and, sometimes, she didn’t seem to realize just how much power she had. Perhaps no one realized it, until it was too late. 

“You know, they’ve been talking about bringing us all under government control?” Natasha asked him one day as they sat in his office discussing the mission to Indonesia they’d just returned from. Chitauri tech and old Stark tech kept turning up in the most dangerous places, little fires popping up here and there all the time. They had to be handled so as not to turn into big fires later.

The Sokovian disaster had made the American public and much of the rest of the world question how safe the Avengers were – people with so much power being free to do as they pleased. Steve personally found this insulting and disturbing. Did they really want an alien invasion? Or a killer robot to destroy the world? 

“Look at what happened with SHIELD,” he said. “It was rotten from the center out all the time. How do we know that won’t happen again?” 

“Steve, we caused a whole city to be destroyed. Maybe we need regulating a little,” Natasha argued.

“Stark and Banner caused it. Not the rest of us.” 

“But the general public doesn’t see it that way,” she argued. “They don’t know all we know. They just see people with superpowers destroying cities and killing innocent people.” 

“Can we agree to disagree?” he finally asked her. 

She nodded. She got up and started to leave his office, then she turned back. “Why don’t you come by my room after you get your paperwork done? We’ll have a nightcap.” 

He was stunned by her invitation because things had been all business between them since they began training the new Avengers. He nodded. He hurriedly finished what he was doing and headed to her quarters. She was dressed in a tank top and shorts when she answered the door. He couldn’t help but notice her curves. She might have been his best friend, but he remembered what they’d shared for that one night in Sam’s apartment. He replayed it in his mind more often than he liked to admit. 

“Come on in. You drinking with me tonight?”

He nodded. Alcohol didn’t affect him much, if at all, but he didn’t mind having a drink with her. She poured them both a tumbler of bourbon. 

“No vodka?” he asked. She normally drank vodka.

“Bourbons burns and I like that feeling. Sets your belly on fire, too. It seems fitting somehow.” 

She held her glass out for a toast. “To lonely heroes!”

He tapped his glass to hers. Where had that come from? 

They drank. She refilled her glass and downed a second one. 

“What’s going on, Natasha?” 

“I’m Russian. We are a moody and depressed people. That’s why we drink and pick fights with people, with whole countries.”

“Do you want to pick a fight with me?”

“Nah, I want to fuck you tonight, Captain Rogers.” 

His face colored. There was nothing in the world he wanted more than that, but not like this. “Maybe not such a good idea.” 

“You liked it before. Didn’t you? You never asked again.”

How could he tell her he thought she was with Barton then? “Things happened. We got busy. It wasn’t you.” 

“You practically threw me at Bruce.” 

His jaw dropped. “That’s not how I remember it, Natasha.”

“I heard you tell him to go for it!” 

“Well, you hadn’t seemed to be interested in me. I might have been a little drunk, too.” 

“You’re as stupid as other men, Steve Rogers.”

“And you’re drunk, N’tasha. I’m going to my quarters. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He turned and left. He was furious with her and with himself. Had he thrown away any chance he had with her because he didn’t know that Barton was only her friend? Was that all Barton was to her? He didn’t even go back to his room but to the gym, instead. He grabbed one of the old punching bags that Stark had sent there just for him and he beat it into submission, beat it until the sand leaked out onto the floor. He kept beating it until it hit the floor and slid all the way across the room. 

And he didn’t feel a fucking bit better! 

Back in his room, he’d stripped and got in the shower and just how alone he was hit him, almost taking his breath away. He stood under the spray and thought he’d cry if it would help, but he didn’t see how it could. He didn’t see any way that he’d be able to convince Natasha that he did care for her after all that had happened. 

For better or worse, events again intervened in their lives and again, nothing would ever be the same. 

The Avengers got called out to Lagos to keep Rumlow, now calling himself Crossbones, and his gang from stealing cache of chemical weapons. Things went sideways and Wanda accidentally blew up a building, killing civilians and several Wakandan aid workers. Steve felt so bad for Wanda. She was young and, in combat, things happen, sometimes really bad things. It was the life of a soldier, but he knew that Wanda wasn’t a soldier, like the rest of them. 

He was furious when Stark showed up at their headquarters with Thaddeus Ross, now Secretary of State, in tow to convince them all to sign something called the Sokovia Accords. Just as Natasha had said, they planned on making all people with powers sign them and would declare anyone who didn’t an outlaw. The Avengers and members of the now secret, black ops SHIELD would be required to sign, even if they had no powers and could only operate with permission from both the UN _and_ any country they entered.

He and Natasha argued over it in his quarters that evening. 

“He’s right, Steve. We are dangerous. We do need to be kept in check.”

“Dammit, Stark is dangerous. His fucking control obsession made Ultron. Not me. Not you. Not Wanda. We all cleaned up his mess. And now he wants to make us sign the accords because he can’t be trusted! Have you read them?”

She nodded. “I have, and while I don’t totally agree with them, maybe discretion is the better part of valor. Sign them now and fight them when we must.”

“Ross wants us all locked up. Surely you know that.” 

“Ross is an ass, I agree, but Tony is not and neither is Rhodes. Ross won’t be in power forever.” 

“I can’t and I won’t.” Surely she didn’t think he’d change his mind? 

“I’m going with him to Vienna, to the formal signing. Are you coming?” 

“I can’t. I – I can’t.”

“I have to go,” she told him.

“I know you do. Good luck.”

“Steve, I – we – never mind.” She headed to the door. 

“Stay with me, N’tasha.” 

She turned around and looked at him for a moment, then left his room without another word.

*

Peggy Carter, his beautiful Peggy, died and was to be buried in London. He was invited to be a pallbearer at the service and Sam went with him for moral support. Natasha came to the service on her way to Vienna. She held him for a few moments after the service. 

“Please come with me. Sign the Accords, Steve. We can still do so much good.” 

He couldn’t. Sharon’s eulogy had reminded him that Peggy would have stood her ground and had done so in the past when he was chosen to become a supersoldier. He would stand his ground now.

_And she said, compromise when you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move. It is your duty, to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye and say, "No, you move.”_

He didn’t see Natasha again until Berlin, where she let him and Bucky go to Siberia in Stark’s plane. 

*

Things went badly, very badly, with Stark. Steve and all of his allies had become fugitives. T’Challa, the new king of Wakanda, was kind and granted him and Bucky asylum until they could decide what to do. With some help from Fury and Hill, Steve got Sam, Lang, Barton and Wanda out of the Raft, where Ross had sent them. He didn’t know where Natasha went and didn’t trust anyone enough to ask. 

While Lang and Barton turned themselves in and took their punishment for the sake of their children, he and Sam began cleaning up small messes here and there all over the globe. Money and weapons came from somewhere, but he thought it might be a good idea not to ask many questions. Sometimes it was better to simply not know where things came from. 

He hadn’t seen Natasha since she’d let him and Bucky go. 

They never stayed long in one place and he and Sam were cooling their heels in Amsterdam after one such mission when he saw the woman, the blond prostitute. She looked a lot like Natasha. She was about the same height, her face looked a little like Natasha, too. She was working in one of the houses in Amsterdam’s famous Red Light District. 

He’d ended up there because he’d gotten so damned lonely.

“Go down there. Find a pretty girl and enjoy yourself, Steve. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s legal,” Sam had told him. He suspected that was why Sam had engineered them to be there in Amsterdam in the first place. While he never mentioned Natasha by name, he was pretty sure that Sam picked up on what had happened between them. He’d have to have been blind not to see it. 

He’d never done anything like this before, but the blonde looked so much like Natasha. He was lonely and alone now. Maybe Sam was right and for a few minutes he could pretend the girl _was_ Natasha. 

It was something he never would have considered a few years ago, but he was a different man now. He had lost any innocence he’d had left after Siberia. He was sorry for the pain he’d caused Tony, but he couldn’t change it either. The best he could do was let Stark know that he’d be there if they needed him. 

He went into the house where he’d seen the girl the night before. The lighting in the hallway was terrible, but he saw her in the doorway again. She wore a black bustier and black boots up to her thighs. Her hair was cut in a bob and was platinum blond. He could see in the dim light that she had a mouth a little like Natasha’s. It was a mouth made for kisses. 

When she saw him, she turned from the doorway to go back to the window, but he spoke to her.

“Don’t go. I want – I want you. You remind me of someone.” 

She wore a small black mask over the upper part of her face now, but she hadn’t had it on last night. She motioned for him to follow her. He followed her to a small room with a small bed. 

“What is your pleasure?” she asked with a heavy French accent.

“I – Can I kiss you?” 

She looked hard at him for a moment, then nodded. He stepped close and took her in his arms. She was even the same size as Natasha. Despite his misgivings, his body was all too happy to respond to her as his mouth touched hers. He let her take his coat off and she unbuttoned his shirt. There was something oddly familiar about what she was doing. He told himself it was simply the physical resemblance to Natasha.

She pushed his shirt back and off of his shoulders then began to unbuckle his belt.

“Can’t you take your mask off?” he asked, reaching for it. 

“Non!” she insisted, grabbing his hand to stop him, her reaction as fast as lightning, as fast as Natasha’s reaction would have been. 

He kissed her again as she unzipped him and put her hand inside his underwear. His brain kept telling him to leave but his body, more specifically, his cock wanted to stay. He needed this. He needed her.

She stroked him until he was thrusting into her hand, then she finished removing his trousers and underwear. She pushed him onto the bed and wiggled out of a tiny thong and flung it at him as he sat on the edge of the bed. She put one booted foot up on the bed and began to touch herself. 

He bit his lip as he watched her fingers slide into her folds. She made little sounds as she did it. She stepped close and slipped the lacy cups of her bustier down to expose her full breasts to him. He reached for her, burying his head between her soft breasts before seeking a nipple to suck. Her breath hissed out as he bit her gently and put both arms around her in an embrace. 

He realized when she ran her hands through his darkened hair and newly grown out beard that he’d touched these breasts before. Her kiss had seemed familiar, too, but he’d thought maybe it was just his desperation. But he remembered her beautiful breasts from the only other time he’d been completely naked with her. 

“Oh god, it _ is_ you.” 

She pretended that she hadn’t even heard him. She moaned and guided his mouth back to her breast. 

He wanted her so badly, that he decided to play along. He lay back on the bed with his legs still over the side and pulled her with him up onto the bed, where he lay beside her. He began to unlace her bustier and when he had it all undone, he opened it and exposed her naked body to his gaze. He saw the scar that Bucky had given her when he shot through her to kill her prisoner when he was the Winter Soldier. He leaned down to kiss it, running his tongue over it after the kiss. 

“I loved you, you fool,” she said very causally to him as he opened her legs and moved between them to taste her. She made a sound when he sucked her clitoris. “I never knew why you turned away from me.”

He didn’t answer, but moved up to kiss her while he slid a finger inside her. She was very wet and ready for him, moving against his finger. He moved the finger in and out until she was clamping her legs together and riding his hand. He kissed her and squeezed one of her breasts as she cried out in pleasure. He moaned along with her as she came on his fingers. 

He freed his fingers, licking them clean and looked into her face. He very slowly removed the mask. Her hair had been colored platinum blond and cut shorter, but he was looking into the face of the woman he had fallen in love with years ago, Natasha Romanoff. 

“You didn’t tell me you cared. I thought you were with Barton. The two of you were so close. You acted like that night – like it never happened. I can’t tell you how many nights I replayed it in my mind over and over.” 

He stopped talking and moved his body between her legs, entering her slowly. He meant to stay slow, but her heat and tightness were his undoing. He began to thrust in long, deep movements. She put her arms around him and pulled him close. 

“You weren’t the only one how thought about that night. Barton saved me. I owed him and we became friends, partners,” she said as he moved inside her. She ran her hands down his back and pulled him down to lie on top of her on the narrow bed. He braced his weight on his elbows so as now to hurt her. 

“I – I can’t talk n - ohgodn’tashaohgod,” was all he managed to say for several minutes. The little bed rocked harder and harder as the muscles in his ass and legs flexed with every thrust. 

Natasha moved her hand between them, putting her fingers on her clitoris and letting his thrusts move her hand. She raised her legs, changing her body angle. His breath hitched and he jerked his hips hard enough to cause the little bed to move on the floor, the headboard banging hard against the wall. 

Tension built in his testicles, in his muscles, as his body was readying itself, then the damn broke. He shouted her name as pleasure rushed through him. He saw in her face and heard in her cries that she was with him, coming again. They finally slowed to a gentle rocking motion and he lay on top of her with his head on her chest, as emotionally spent as he was physically. 

He shifted so he wasn’t smashing her flat. She smoothed his long hair off of his forehead. “Your new look is sexy, Rogers.”

He looked up at her and grinned. “So is yours, Romanov.”

He wasn’t sure what to say after that. 

“Fury sends regards, by the way,” she said. For a moment, she seemed flustered. “I’m not a hooker, Steve. I – he wanted to find you and Sam, to make sure you’re safe. I volunteered. We knew you were in and out of Amsterdam. I lucked out that you found me so quickly.”

“I’ve never been down here before so how -”

“I’ve been following you. And spying. I heard Sam encouraging you to come down here. I fixed it so you’d see me and then, it was a matter of time. I knew you’d notice me and come to investigate. I didn’t expect,” she waved her hands to them in the bed, “all this, but I’m certainly not sorry it happened.” 

She was right. He had come to this district because he was lonely, because he needed to feel someone warm and willing in his arms. 

“So I’m just an assignment?” He had to know, even if she said yes. 

She rolled her eyes. “Are all men such idiots?” she asked. “You’ve never been just an assignment, not even from that first kiss. I felt you getting hard against my belly.”

“I’m glad it was you who came looking. Not sure I’d have enjoyed this with Fury though Hill might be -” he ventured as she smacked his arm and rolled him over so she was on top of him. He started to laugh. She joined in. 

“Could you use another person in your and Sam’s crusade?” she asked. “I’d like to join your merry band.”

“You? You’re a hell of a better spy than either of us. You have skills we don’t so yeah, we’d love to have you. _I’d_ love to have you, uh, join us.” He finished lamely as he blushed. 

“Your _having_ me? That would be part of the deal. I want to be your partner, in every way.” 

“If you’d told me all these things before SHIELD fell, life might have been a lot easier.”

She laughed. “I thought you knew that Clint was just my friend. I did try to make something with Bruce, but he was too frightened that he’d Hulk out and kill me. I was sure I had nothing to offer him.”

“You and he weren’t – you didn’t?” 

She shook her head and moved to lay at his side, putting her head on his shoulder. “Nope. I tried everything, but he was scared of hurting me. I think that was part of the reason he left.”

“I know how that feels. I worry about hurting my partners.”

“You haven’t hurt me yet.” She scooted up so she could kiss him. “You can try some more, if you like

“Is my time up yet?” he asked her with a grin. 

“Not yet, you’ve got another half hour.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her and grinned. “Guess we better get busy then.” 

She pulled him back into her arms and began kissing him again…

**Author's Note:**

> My [**Tumblr**](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/alexcat45).


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